6 Overview of sub-study 2
6.1 Motivation for the development of an alternative method
The Tutorial in Introductory Physics curriculum consists of con-text-specific tutorials which each involve a pretest assignment, a
6 Overview of sub-study 2
Sub-study 2 focused on the adoption of the Tutorials in Intro-ductory Physics curriculum (McDermott et al., 2010a). This cur-riculum, later referred as tutorials, has proven effective in over-coming students’ difficulties in learning physics (McDermott, 2001). Nevertheless, its use requires additional resources that go beyond from those obtainable for an individual instructor, such as arranging small classroom sessions with two trained instruc-tors.
To make the tutorials more accessible for instructors at dif-ferent institutes, sub-study 2 has provided a fairly easy way to adopt the tutorials in a lecture hall setting. The following chap-ter argues that our way of using tutorials differs essentially from other ways presented in the PER literature. It also emphasises the benefits of our way of using the tutorials as an initial stage in their adoption. The chapter presents evidence that suggests that way we have used the tutorials has supported students’ learn-ing of the basics of the ray model and the wave model of light in the course of years 2011-2014. The presentation of these results covers more data than is reported in articles II and III. The un-published results show that the trend of the results as presented in the articles has remained in the course of this study. Finally this chapter discusses the benefits of different ways of imple-menting the tutorials. In addition, it highlights some of the hy-pothetical factors that may explain why some implementations support students’ learning more than others.
6.1 MOTIVATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ALTERNA-TIVE METHOD OF ADOPTING TUTORIALS
The Tutorial in Introductory Physics curriculum consists of con-text-specific tutorials which each involve a pretest assignment, a
worksheet, homework, and a posttest assignment. These in-structional materials are published in three books: an instructor guide16 (McDermott et al., 2003), workbook (McDermott et al., 2010a), and homework assignments (McDermott et al., 2010b).
The instructor guide contains pretest and posttest assignments and instructions about how to use the tutorials. The workbook contains worksheets that are meant to be covered in tutorial ses-sions, where students can consult with an instructor(s), whereas the homework assignments provide material that students are expected to go through by themselves.
The following subsections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 describe the im-plementation of tutorials in small classroom and lecture hall set-tings, respectively. In subsection 6.1.3, we argue why an alterna-tive way of implementing of tutorials is needed to permit wider use of tutorials per se.
6.1.1 Tutorials conducted in a small classroom setting
The tutorials are most commonly used in small classroom set-tings (McDermott et al., 2003). In a conventional physics course the use of tutorials has taken place in weekly recitation sessions substituting the presentation of a weekly homework assignment (McDermott, 2001).
The content of the tutorials is based on conceptual models of physics that are typically covered at an introductory level. The tutorials aim to address those aspects of these models that are found difficult for students to grasp after attending lectures.
These difficulties are tackled by engaging students in applying their knowledge in a pretest, a tutorial session, homework, and a posttest.
The pretest precedes a tutorial session, and it contains a few paper-and-pencil tasks that ask students to apply their content knowledge of physics that will have been recently lectured on in unfamiliar situations. In the past, the pretest was conducted in paper-and-pencil format either before or at the beginning of weekly tutorial sessions (McDermott et al., 2003). Nowadays,
16 The guidebook is not typically available in bookstores; it needs to be ordered from the publisher separately.
students take a pretest online before the tutorial session (see, e.g., (Lindsey, Heron, & Shaffer, 2009)). The pretest serves two pur-poses: (1) it informs instructor(s) about the level of students’
understanding of physics content after it has been lectured on;
(2) it informs students about what they are expected to be able to deal with by the end of a course in terms of the physics con-tent (McDermott, 2001).
After the pretest, the students participate in the weekly tuto-rial session (50 min/week). In each session, the approximately 20 students are divided into groups of three or four. These groups work through a tutorial worksheet which typically involves 3-5 pages from the tutorial workbook (McDermott et al., 2010a), un-der the guidance of two instructors. The worksheet divides the conceptual model being taught into statements, questions, and hands-on tasks. These activities aim at providing necessary items of information from which students should be able to con-struct the taught conceptual model by themselves. Students are expected to collaborate with their peers while working through the worksheet. In addition, students may negotiate with their instructors whenever necessary. The instructors are typically graduate students who have been trained to work as tutorial in-structors17. The role of the instructors is to support students’
thinking by teaching them questioning rather than by telling.
Thus, these instructors guide not by providing answers to work-sheet tasks but rather by encouraging students to examine their thoughts to see whether they are consistent with other evidence obtained during the tutorial session. (McDermott, 2001)
After the tutorial session, the students are expected to tackle the tutorial homework assignment (McDermott et al., 2010b).
The homework assignments consist of similar, but not identical, tasks to those in the tutorial worksheets. The students return their homework assignments, which will be graded and subse-quently returned to them by the instructors. This allows the
17 During their training the instructors respond to the pretest, go through the tutorials worksheet, and discuss the most common sdents’ difficulties and strategies and how to address them during a tu-torial session (McDermott et al., 2003).
worksheet, homework, and a posttest assignment. These in-structional materials are published in three books: an instructor guide16 (McDermott et al., 2003), workbook (McDermott et al., 2010a), and homework assignments (McDermott et al., 2010b).
The instructor guide contains pretest and posttest assignments and instructions about how to use the tutorials. The workbook contains worksheets that are meant to be covered in tutorial ses-sions, where students can consult with an instructor(s), whereas the homework assignments provide material that students are expected to go through by themselves.
The following subsections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 describe the im-plementation of tutorials in small classroom and lecture hall set-tings, respectively. In subsection 6.1.3, we argue why an alterna-tive way of implementing of tutorials is needed to permit wider use of tutorials per se.
6.1.1 Tutorials conducted in a small classroom setting
The tutorials are most commonly used in small classroom set-tings (McDermott et al., 2003). In a conventional physics course the use of tutorials has taken place in weekly recitation sessions substituting the presentation of a weekly homework assignment (McDermott, 2001).
The content of the tutorials is based on conceptual models of physics that are typically covered at an introductory level. The tutorials aim to address those aspects of these models that are found difficult for students to grasp after attending lectures.
These difficulties are tackled by engaging students in applying their knowledge in a pretest, a tutorial session, homework, and a posttest.
The pretest precedes a tutorial session, and it contains a few paper-and-pencil tasks that ask students to apply their content knowledge of physics that will have been recently lectured on in unfamiliar situations. In the past, the pretest was conducted in paper-and-pencil format either before or at the beginning of weekly tutorial sessions (McDermott et al., 2003). Nowadays,
16 The guidebook is not typically available in bookstores; it needs to be ordered from the publisher separately.
students take a pretest online before the tutorial session (see, e.g., (Lindsey, Heron, & Shaffer, 2009)). The pretest serves two pur-poses: (1) it informs instructor(s) about the level of students’
understanding of physics content after it has been lectured on;
(2) it informs students about what they are expected to be able to deal with by the end of a course in terms of the physics con-tent (McDermott, 2001).
After the pretest, the students participate in the weekly tuto-rial session (50 min/week). In each session, the approximately 20 students are divided into groups of three or four. These groups work through a tutorial worksheet which typically involves 3-5 pages from the tutorial workbook (McDermott et al., 2010a), un-der the guidance of two instructors. The worksheet divides the conceptual model being taught into statements, questions, and hands-on tasks. These activities aim at providing necessary items of information from which students should be able to con-struct the taught conceptual model by themselves. Students are expected to collaborate with their peers while working through the worksheet. In addition, students may negotiate with their instructors whenever necessary. The instructors are typically graduate students who have been trained to work as tutorial in-structors17. The role of the instructors is to support students’
thinking by teaching them questioning rather than by telling.
Thus, these instructors guide not by providing answers to work-sheet tasks but rather by encouraging students to examine their thoughts to see whether they are consistent with other evidence obtained during the tutorial session. (McDermott, 2001)
After the tutorial session, the students are expected to tackle the tutorial homework assignment (McDermott et al., 2010b).
The homework assignments consist of similar, but not identical, tasks to those in the tutorial worksheets. The students return their homework assignments, which will be graded and subse-quently returned to them by the instructors. This allows the
17 During their training the instructors respond to the pretest, go through the tutorials worksheet, and discuss the most common sdents’ difficulties and strategies and how to address them during a tu-torial session (McDermott et al., 2003).
dents to receive feedback on whether they had learnt the physics content as expected. (McDermott et al., 2003)
The posttest is typically used as part of a course or midterm exam. It corresponds to the pretest, although it is not identical to the pretest (McDermott, 2001). By comparing students’ answers to a pretest and a posttest given in a particular tutorial, useful indicators of the effectiveness of a tutorial on students’ learning can be found.
Much of the content of the tutorials has been developed iter-atively; tasks in the worksheets and/or homework assignments are refined repeatedly in order to help students to maximize their learning gains. Students’ learning gains are typically com-pared to those of the tutorial instructors, since they will have re-sponded to the similar questions in their preparation session (McDermott, 2001). If students achieve scores that are as high as those of their instructors, then a particular tutorial is regarded as effective by the tutorials developers (Kryjevskaia, Stezer, &
Heron, 2011).
The developers have found that the tutorials are most effec-tive when they are conducted in a small classroom setting (McDermott et al., 2003). The following subsection describes how the tutorials might also be used in a lecture hall setting.
6.1.2 Use of the tutorials in a lecture hall setting
The motive for implementing the tutorials in a lecture hall set-ting arises from a number of challenges encountered in imple-menting them in the small classroom setting (McDermott et al., 2003). The interactive tutorial lecture is the developers’ format for using the tutorials in a lecture hall setting. In this format, a lec-ture period (50 min) is divided into two modes: group work and class discussion. During the group work, students work through a certain part of the tutorial worksheet with their neighbours for 5-10 minutes, while the lecturer and other instructors move around the room, teaching individual students by questioning.
Following the group work mode, the lecturer will then engage the whole class in a discussion, at the same time aiming at guid-ing them towards articulatguid-ing important ideas covered
previ-ously in the tutorial worksheet. In addition to these two modes, test questions are used to evaluate the students’ learning at var-ious stages in the lecture period (Personal communication with members of the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington, 2010).
6.1.3 The need for an alternative adaptation of the tutorials Despite two alternative methods of implementing the tutorials, both of them may be too demanding for an instructor to imple-ment. The small classroom implementation requires organizing small classroom sessions with two well-prepared instructors.
These changes typically require an institutional level of com-mitment to the use of the tutorials (Finkelstein & Pollock, 2005).
This level of commitment can be difficult to obtain without hav-ing factual evidence about the benefits of the tutorials in a par-ticular institution (Turpen & Finkelstein, 2008).
In fact, the format of interactive tutorial lectures requires fewer external resources and is an easier way to implement the tutorials. However, it requires engaging students in the whole-class discussion, which has proven to be a demanding task even for experienced instructors (Fagen, Crouch, & Mazur, 2002;
Turpen & Finkelstein, 2009). In consequence, the interactive tu-torial lectures may be much too demanding a format for an in-structor who may have become accustomed to traditional lectur-ing but is implementlectur-ing the tutorials for the first time.
The whole-class discussion is also problematic with regard to indicating the effectiveness of the tutorials. The problem is that a whole-class discussion – a dialogue between a lecturer and students – may support the students’ learning by itself (Beatty, Gerace, Leonard, & Dufresne, 2006). In that case, it will be difficult, if not even impossible, to distinguish between learn-ing that has occurred as a result of tutorial tasks and learnlearn-ing re-sulting from a lecturer’s dialogue with students. As a conse-quence, interactive tutorial lectures may prove to be instructor-dependent and thus a biased indication of the effectiveness of the tutorials.
dents to receive feedback on whether they had learnt the physics content as expected. (McDermott et al., 2003)
The posttest is typically used as part of a course or midterm exam. It corresponds to the pretest, although it is not identical to the pretest (McDermott, 2001). By comparing students’ answers to a pretest and a posttest given in a particular tutorial, useful indicators of the effectiveness of a tutorial on students’ learning can be found.
Much of the content of the tutorials has been developed iter-atively; tasks in the worksheets and/or homework assignments are refined repeatedly in order to help students to maximize their learning gains. Students’ learning gains are typically com-pared to those of the tutorial instructors, since they will have re-sponded to the similar questions in their preparation session (McDermott, 2001). If students achieve scores that are as high as those of their instructors, then a particular tutorial is regarded as effective by the tutorials developers (Kryjevskaia, Stezer, &
Heron, 2011).
The developers have found that the tutorials are most effec-tive when they are conducted in a small classroom setting (McDermott et al., 2003). The following subsection describes how the tutorials might also be used in a lecture hall setting.
6.1.2 Use of the tutorials in a lecture hall setting
The motive for implementing the tutorials in a lecture hall set-ting arises from a number of challenges encountered in imple-menting them in the small classroom setting (McDermott et al., 2003). The interactive tutorial lecture is the developers’ format for using the tutorials in a lecture hall setting. In this format, a lec-ture period (50 min) is divided into two modes: group work and class discussion. During the group work, students work through a certain part of the tutorial worksheet with their neighbours for 5-10 minutes, while the lecturer and other instructors move around the room, teaching individual students by questioning.
Following the group work mode, the lecturer will then engage the whole class in a discussion, at the same time aiming at guid-ing them towards articulatguid-ing important ideas covered
previ-ously in the tutorial worksheet. In addition to these two modes, test questions are used to evaluate the students’ learning at var-ious stages in the lecture period (Personal communication with members of the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington, 2010).
6.1.3 The need for an alternative adaptation of the tutorials Despite two alternative methods of implementing the tutorials, both of them may be too demanding for an instructor to imple-ment. The small classroom implementation requires organizing small classroom sessions with two well-prepared instructors.
These changes typically require an institutional level of com-mitment to the use of the tutorials (Finkelstein & Pollock, 2005).
This level of commitment can be difficult to obtain without hav-ing factual evidence about the benefits of the tutorials in a par-ticular institution (Turpen & Finkelstein, 2008).
In fact, the format of interactive tutorial lectures requires fewer external resources and is an easier way to implement the tutorials. However, it requires engaging students in the whole-class discussion, which has proven to be a demanding task even for experienced instructors (Fagen, Crouch, & Mazur, 2002;
Turpen & Finkelstein, 2009). In consequence, the interactive tu-torial lectures may be much too demanding a format for an in-structor who may have become accustomed to traditional lectur-ing but is implementlectur-ing the tutorials for the first time.
The whole-class discussion is also problematic with regard to indicating the effectiveness of the tutorials. The problem is that a whole-class discussion – a dialogue between a lecturer and students – may support the students’ learning by itself (Beatty, Gerace, Leonard, & Dufresne, 2006). In that case, it will be difficult, if not even impossible, to distinguish between learn-ing that has occurred as a result of tutorial tasks and learnlearn-ing re-sulting from a lecturer’s dialogue with students. As a conse-quence, interactive tutorial lectures may prove to be instructor-dependent and thus a biased indication of the effectiveness of the tutorials.
In sub-study 2, we did not use whole-class discussions but implemented the tutorials in a lecture hall setting. This has been established as a form of tutorial intervention that was designed to test the impact of tutorial tasks on students’ learning of physics.
Our intervention consisted of two modes of instruction during which (1) students responded to test questions, and (2) students worked on tutorial tasks. Combining these modes, the impact of the tutorial tasks was tested in the case of tutorials dealing with Two Source Interference and Light and Shadow18. These tutorials were suitable since they initiated a set of tutorials aimed at im-proving students’ learning of the ray model and the wave model of light.
Sections 6.2 and 6.3 which follow describe how these tutori-als were prepared for the tutorial intervention and how their impact on students’ learning was investigated.
6.2 PREPARATIONS AND PRACTICES OF THE TUTORIAL